foil

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Explain the foil between Huckleberry and Jim's friendship and the friendship between the King and Duke.


In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the many topics is friendship. During Huck and Jim's journey to freedom they formed a friendship. While on their voyage they came across two other characters that had also formed a friendship, The King and Duke. These two different friendships' between friends are total opposites of each other. Their morals and values are not the same nor are they compatible. For example, The King and Duke forced Huck to join them in a skit so that the King and Duke could collect money for themselves, risking Jim's life by tying him up to a tree in the woods with a sign next to him mentioning that he was a slave. One situation that demonstrates Huckleberry's friendship with Jim was when they were on the island away from home. Jim and Huck had escaped and had hidden,Jim asked Huck to keep his secret and every time Jim would get lost or mixed up in something ,Huck would always find a way to rescue him.Moreover, this same situation plays between their friendship when Huck attempted to rescue Jim out of the cabin at Tom Sawyers' relative's plantation. There are many similarities that could be drawn between these two separate friendships.They all lied but at different extents and they all had a conscience woven into them. Therefore, it brought balance to their relationships and helped readers appreciate the good in them. To conclude, Huck and Jim become more appreciative of their friendship once observing the friendship between The Duke and King.
Reneisha and Maria

Pro: You had great sentence structure and sentence variation such as, “They all lied but at different extents and they all had a conscience woven into them.”
Con: You could have given specific embedded examples from the novel to demonstrate your point.
Question: How are Huck and Jim’s friendship specifically different than the King and Duke.
Alex and Jaime
The difference between Jim and Huck’s friendship and the King and Duke’s alliance is that, Jim is a slave while Huck is a child. Meanwhile, the King and Duke are adults. They are different because even as a slave and child they know better than to lie to the grievances of the dead or to be selfish in every moment. But as adults for them to do those things shows their maturity levels are low.
Reneisha and Maria

Explain the foil between Huckleberry and Jim's friendship and the friendship between the King and Duke.
The connection between the duke and king act as a foil to that of Jim and Huck, due to the various opposites when comparing the friendships from one to another. The camaraderie between Huck and Jim is based on an earnest and mutual friendship. For example, Huck declares that he will risk his own well being to assist in freeing Jim from the bonds of slavery. Jim feels a similar bond to that of Huck when he states, “de on’y white genlmen (Huck) dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.” Not only Huck, but the two’s relationship as a whole exemplifies a Bildungsroman, from being blocked by racial barriers to relishing in mutual friendship. The relationship between the duke and king is not a friendship but an alliance based on lies and avarice behavior. From the time they met each other they lie about their status stating that they have the bloodline of a duke and king, henceforth their names. The book itself describes their dishonest relationship as being,”thick as thieves” comparing their relationship to the immorality of thieves.
Owen, Keith, and chaz

Your paragraph has weak sentence structure and is confusing, especially the opening sentence. The King and Duke should have been capitalized. We thought that it was clever to add vocabulary from our vocabulary list and you gave well thought quotes from the novel. After reading about the King and Duke’s alliance and the relationship between Huck and Jim, what qualities do you believe make a good friendship?


Maria and Reneisha

Thank you for your critique. Your opinion on our weak sentence structure has been duly noted. To answer your question, we believe that a thriving relationship is centered around a base of trust, balanced out with love. For example, a friendship should be a two way street of give and take. The qualitites exemplified in the duke and kings relationship, if you can even call it that, are not those of a healthy friendship.
Owen, Chaz, and Keith